Rebecca Unterman

Although the state of Washington has invested in policies to address inequities in educational opportunities for its learners, deep inequities persist in postsecondary degree attainment and earnings. Differences in the pathways young people take from high school to postsecondary education and work may be one mechanism causing these differences in outcomes. Much attention has been paid to traditional school-to-work routes, e.g., going straight to a 4-year degree program after graduating high ...

This project will assess the effectiveness of the Washington College Grant (WCG) for increasing postsecondary access and attainment for low-income college students in Washington state and for improving equity in postsecondary education access and attainment for students from key demographic groups. The Washington state legislature has enacted the WCG as a need-based financial aid program to increase access to postsecondary education for Washington residents. The state intends for the program...

Decades of research shows that children who attend preschool enter kindergarten with stronger school readiness skills. However, questions about how long the benefits of preschool last have persisted since the first major public investment in preschool in the U.S in the 1960s. In partnership with the Boston Public Schools (BPS), researchers will conduct a follow-up study of the impacts of the Boston Prekindergarten (Pre-K) Program into early adulthood. Researchers will follow four cohorts of ...

Amidst modest increases in high school graduation rates for all students, stark differences still exist between the supports and quality of secondary schooling provided to low-income students of color. In response to this equity issue, there has been a growth in third-party "school support" organizations like Urban Assembly (UA): groups created to independently interface with schools to provide additional monetary, organizational, instructional, personnel and professional development resourc...

In this project, researchers will estimate the causal impact of New York City's (NYC) Career Technical Education (CTE) programs on students' career and work-related learning experiences, social and behavioral competencies, high school diploma receipt, and transitions to college and the labor market. The study will examine variation across more than 200 of NYC's CTE programs to identify malleable factors that are associated with impacts. Despite the proliferation of CTE programs, only a few s...

Rigorous evaluations of public prekindergarten programs have confirmed that children enrolled in these programs have higher language, literacy, and mathematics outcomes at kindergarten entry, on average. A prior IES-funded study of the Boston Public Schools (BPS) prekindergarten program extended this evidence base. In a regression discontinuity (RD) study of over 2,000 children, the researchers found that the BPS program had moderate-to-large impacts on children's language, literacy, and mat...